Puppet Strings
by midnightjen
Summary: After so many years of manipulating those around him, being under the control of Black Claw doesn't sit too well with Sean.


**a/n:** I'm not sure this was quite what I wanted it to be in the end but it leads directly into the mini-fic (yet to be written) that deals with Black Claw and Hadrian's Wall. Takes place after 9 Tales of Seduction and 4 Months.

 **Puppet Strings**

Some days it was easy to forget how beautiful Adalind was.

It probably helped that he'd done so much to hurt her, was still doing so much to hurt her, that the simple fact of her beauty escaped him. But she was beautiful and Sean could remember the first time he met her, how he'd been approached by her mother for something completely unrelated and she'd been there. So young, still in law school, and he'd instantly wanted her.

He'd been older, powerful, it hadn't been difficult to draw her attention when they'd met again years later, no doubt her mother had encouraged it. He hadn't cared much, either way, why Adalind was interested in him. He'd taken her places, showered her with gifts and they'd had a lot of great sex.

But she was young and he got bored and he'd been so thirsty for power that when he'd found himself waiting on her in the company of her mother it had been easy to accept the advances Catherine had made.

Sex with Adalind had been fun, she wasn't inexperienced, not by a long shot, but sex with Catherine had been hot, passionate and had that delightful spark of the forbidden.

He'd grown bored of Adalind in time, the power and support she could offer him wasn't enough to get him where he needed and although his dalliance with Catherine could give him more power it was hardly a suitable relationship to continue.

He'd never loved Adalind so breaking things off with her had been easy, he'd hurt her but it had been easy enough to spin the line about them not working out, about how he worried he was stopping her from having other experiences. She was young, she ate it up and they managed to stay something like friends.

He got to keep her power and support, got to have sex with her mother whenever Catherine was in town and he didn't have to play at being the dutiful, loving boyfriend.

Adalind had ambitions of her own, he'd used that to his advantage more than once, but with her mother whispering in her ear, those ambitions had made the break-up easier.

Catherine had always found it easy to manipulate her daughter, it was one of the things he had admired most about her. He wondered if Adalind still thought her becoming a lawyer had really shown her mother up or if she realised how easily Catherine had manipulated her into that position, into that particular law firm.

She wasn't working now, though. Catherine was dead and his attempts to manipulate Adalind were failing miserably. And he really needed them to work. He was used to having power, to waving around his position as the bastard son to get what he wanted, to have people working for him.

He'd never had that used against him before, not like Black Claw was now. The feel of strings being pulled as they played him did not sit well but he was in so deep now he didn't know how to take back control of his own life, his own quest for power.

He didn't even know how it had happened.

Power had always been his thing, the one thing he wanted more than anything, but in all the years he'd fought for it, in all the years he'd gained strength and used it to manipulate those around him, he'd never once had that power, that strength, used against him. Even the King hadn't been able to manipulate him to this extent, Viktor and Eric certainly hadn't been able to. How had he let Black Claw take so much away from him in the guise of giving him everything he wanted?

Stupidity tasted foul on his lips. Worse because it wasn't someone else's failing that he was being forced to deal with. These were his own mistakes, his own shortcomings. That foul taste on his tongue, the acidic sting at the back of his throat was something he'd never had to deal with before. Even when he was a boy and he and his mother had been forced to flee from the King's wife, he'd never felt anything like this.

This was fear.

Rachael wasn't that attractive and she certainly wasn't that good in bed. How had she managed so completely to manipulate him into believing for one moment that working for Black Claw, that becoming mayor, would give him the power he needed to take hold of the Royals and rule them as he felt he was meant to?

He would be king one day, of that he had no doubt, but this was not the way to do it. He'd been on the right path for so long, playing the long game and manipulating the Grimm and his friends to help him slowly but surely gain power.

He'd fathered a child with Adalind something which had become another attempt to gain control over yet another pawn in his game. He really should have known better. Adalind had done her own thing, manipulated and bargained for her own corner of the chess board. Still, he'd thought there was a chance he could use that to his advantage.

After all, he was father to the strongest hexenbiest to be born in centuries. Her powers were phenomenal, her reach unknown.

He supposed that was how Black Claw had got him. They'd painted a pretty picture and he'd seen, not the mayoral race before him, but the crown. He'd looked at what Black Claw had offered him and he'd seen so much more. They wanted Diana and Adalind and the perfect family for what it could give them, he wanted that family for what Diana could give _him_.

Somewhere along the way, he'd lost control. Somewhere in between sleeping with Rachael and all that campaigning he'd lost control of his power and become Black Claw's pawn when all along he'd been intending to use them for what they could give him.

Now he saw the strings. Now he saw how Black Claw was pulling on him, guiding him in certain directions, now he was going to deal with them as he should have done from the beginning.

He wouldn't cut the strings, that would lead him nowhere, but he could reach out and tug them in a game of his own choosing. He could turn the manipulation around until he was once more in control and calling the shots.

He didn't care for Black Claw or what they stood for, he didn't much care if the wesen uprising succeeded or if it failed. There would still be the royal families and in the fallout they would need a king. Not a king like his father but one who could steer them through the fallout of Black Claw's uprising. The Royals were powerful now but he imagined how powerful they could be with the world watching and understanding just what it was the Royals controlled.

It wouldn't be easy, it would be another long, slow game of small reaches for power and big plays for control but he had a plan. He'd been on the right track before Black Claw took hold of his strings, he needed to put that plan back into action.

He needed a Grimm and his pet hexenbiest. He needed Diana.

He knew he'd never be able to approach Nick, he'd set fire to that bridge by not feigning enough care when Adalind had been captured, but he still knew how to manipulate Adalind, he still knew all the right things to say to get her to help him.

He knew exactly how to make Adalind's own desires work for him and he knew exactly how that would get him Nick.

She hadn't been easy to find. As hard as he'd tried, Sean hadn't been able to find out where she and Nick were living. Every time he thought he'd gotten close, or one of his spies looked to have found something, things went awry. It had taken him weeks to realise that something more than just an off the grid address protected their home. If he didn't know better he'd say Henriette had worked something to protect them but the last time he'd seen her she'd been a shell of her old self and Miesner's very own puppet.

Waiting around for the time when Adalind was coming or going from the Spice Shop posed too much of a risk and so he'd had people doing the best they could to follow her, to try and establish some sort of pattern or routine that he could take advantage of.

Eventually, his patience and planning paid off in the form of (absurdly) a mothers' group.

Adalind Schade had joined a group for young moms. The idea alone had amused him; how far the mighty had fallen. But it had been exactly what he was looking for. Weeks of waiting, of watching, and soon he realised she'd made a friend.

The group met on Wednesday mornings, no doubt the idea being to break up the week. Every Wednesday after the trip to the park with the whole group, Adalind would take Kelly to lunch with one of the other mothers. It hadn't been hard to find out who the woman was. May Ivanovitch was a single mother (husband of three years died in a freak workplace accident before she'd even realised she was pregnant), second generation American, born of Vietnamese descent, who had struck up an easy friendship with Adalind that very first day Adalind had attended the group.

Ivanovitch wasn't wesen but Sean hadn't intended to approach her anyway. Adalind wasn't likely to help him if she found out he'd been using a woman she was starting to consider a friend. She was easy to follow, though, and as the group didn't always meet in the same place she was the way he tracked Adalind's movements since he couldn't just call her anymore.

Her new number had been easy enough to find but having her number didn't mean Adalind would take his calls.

This particular Wednesday, he took a table at the restaurant opposite, the one that gave him an excellent view of Adalind and her new friend and simply waited, sipping on coffee and reading the newspaper as he tracked the pair. He couldn't hear what they were saying but it seemed to have both women in a cheerful enough mood. Kelly sat on Adalind's lap fiddling with the ends of her hair while across the table Ivanovitch's daughter Leda (a few months older than Kelly – named for her father's love of Greek literature) sucked greedily on a bottle.

When she laughed, Adalind really was beautiful, it was easy to sit back and watch her until they were finished their lunch. It made it easy to wonder if Nick knew what he was living with, if he understood what Adalind was truly capable of. Did he look at the woman sharing his home and see the powerful hexenbiest? Did he see the woman who had easily manipulated the people around her to get what she wanted? Did he see the one who had killed? Or did he see the woman she wanted him to see? The one who was a lawyer, the one who was kind and smart and funny?

When Adalind and Ivanovitch left the café, they went in opposite directions, just as they always did. Sean paid for his own meal and walked quickly but calmly out onto the street to intercept Adalind.

'Adalind,' he called softly, stepping out from behind her new car, right in front of her as she lifted Kelly from the stroller into the carrier still strapped into the backseat of her SUV.

'What do you want?' she asked, barely looking up.

'I need your help.'

Adalind laughed coldly. 'That's too bad.'

'It's about Diana.' He expected the name of their daughter to have an effect on Adalind, and it did, just not the one he was expecting. He'd expected her to freeze, to look up at him with wary hope. Instead, she looked at him with pity.

'That won't work anymore,' she told him. 'Maybe if I thought you cared about our daughter, I'd listen, but you don't and Sean, you don't know where Diana is anyway. I know that now.'

This was not going at all as he'd imagined it would but that didn't matter, he knew how to work Adalind. 'Black Claw wants her.'

Adalind rolled her eyes. 'Everyone wants her. They're not going to get her.'

He realised then that he'd made one very large – inaccurate – assumption. He'd assumed Adalind was still just as desperate to learn about her daughter's whereabouts as the last time they'd met. She wasn't. And that meant she knew something he didn't.

That was happening far too frequently these days.

He narrowed his eyes. 'You know something.'

She sighed. 'I really don't.'

If holding their daughter over her wouldn't get him what he wanted, then he would try honesty. Well as honest as he was about to get with anyone he wanted something from. 'I need your help to get out of Black Claw's control.'

Adalind once again defied his expectations by being completely unfazed by his honesty. 'I don't think you understand how little I care.'

Sean blinked. 'Has Nick told you what Black Claw is trying to do?' he asked, hoping to play on the relationship he'd seen between the pair. He doubted they were honest with each other about everything. How much could Nick truly trust her? How much did she trust Nick in turn?

Adalind shut the door gently with a smile for Kelly and started folding the stroller up to put in back. 'It's funny,' she told him, managing to look him dead in the eye while folding the contraption, 'how you just assume that my relationship with Nick is anything like what ours was.'

He had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

'You don't want my help, Sean,' she pointed out. 'You just want to manipulate me into believing I need you to get Diana back so that I'll drag Nick into some ridiculous plan to help you gain control of Black Claw and then become king.'

'What?' As accurate as her accusations were, they still took him by surprise.

'Go use someone else, Sean, I'm tired of playing your games.'

She slammed closed the rear door once the stroller was safely tucked inside and walked right passed him to climb into the driver's seat without another word. She didn't even look at him as she drove off and he realised he'd completely underestimated, not only Adalind, but her relationship with Nick. Her actions implied the feelings he'd witnessed in Nick during her abduction were not as one-sided as he'd imagined.

Nick had always been a good guy, Sean had expected him to form an attachment to Adalind based on their new living arrangement and the fact they had a child together. Adalind was usually smarter than that – though perhaps not when it came to Sean. He'd known Adalind was in love with him all those years ago but he'd assumed that love was really a strong infatuation coloured with the power he could offer her.

It honestly hadn't occurred to him, even with Catherine's hints, that Adalind could truly love. It was another incorrect assumption, one that would cost him, but he'd just assumed that Adalind's desire to have Diana back was so that she could claim the money and power she'd bargained with the Royals for. It honestly hadn't occurred to him that she loved Diana so much that she wanted to keep her daughter safe for no other reason than love.

What had happened to the woman who had bargained to sell their daughter for the return of her powers?

Perhaps he'd gone about this the wrong way. Perhaps he should have approached Nick first. Perhaps he shouldn't have been banking on Adalind's twisted love for their daughter but instead he should have taken advantage of Nick's affection for Adalind, burned bridges and all.

It was easy enough to call Nick into his office when he returned to work. Honesty would be the only way to gain Nick's help, the Grimm would respect his desire to be out from under Black Claw's control much more than, he'd appreciate being manipulated – well overtly so, at any rate.

Again, he'd underestimated Nick and Adalind.

'I'm not helping you,' Nick told him flatly before Sean could even speak.

'Excuse me?'

'Adalind called me.'

'We both want the same thing,' Sean pointed out, ignoring, for the moment, the oddity that was Nick and Adalind sharing things and having ordinary conversations. 'We need to stop Black Claw.'

'Yes,' Nick agreed. 'Black Claw does need to be stopped but how much of this is you wanting to stop Black Claw and how much of this is you looking to gain power?'

Sean said nothing, just gazed steadily at Nick, waiting to see if he was finished. It seemed he was. 'Do you understand the ramifications if they succeed?'

Nick nodded.

'You can't stop them without my help.'

Nick shrugged. 'Maybe not but we don't trust you. Black Claw has been pulling your strings longer than you realise.'

'I wanted no part of their plan.'

'You wanted power. Wasn't that their plan?'

Sean couldn't argue with that and in the face of Nick's flat tone it was hard to imagine this was the same Grimm who had so easily followed his lead. It was hard to believe the hardened man before him was the same Grimm who had been so unsure and cautious in his dealings with the Sean. Where was the man carefully choosing each word so as not to give away too much? Where was the man who told half-truths and white lies to keep Sean in the dark when he already knew so much? Sean wished he could blame Adalind for this sudden open hostility but it was unfortunately another case of his own failings. Black Claw had destroyed his plans in more ways than one.

And now he was faced with no help cutting his strings or tugging them for his own use. There was that burn of fear and worry back again, he really didn't like it. It was perhaps why his next words to Nick were nothing but truth.

'I'm in over my head and I don't like it.'

'Sucks doesn't it?' Nick mused. 'Having someone else pull your strings?'

Sean didn't say anything more, he expected Nick to step up and be the man he was counting on to get him free of Black Claw so he could use the knowledge he'd gained to save them all.

Nick left his office without another word and Sean was forced to face reality. He was alone, in deeper than he'd ever meant to get, and no longer in control of his own actions. Black Claw couldn't be allowed to succeed, their rise to power would benefit no one.

He wasn't about to let those fears – no concerns – stop him, though. Sean Renard did not let a little thing like strings stop him from getting what he wanted. Even if that thing was his own safety and freedom. Because he was beginning to think his life depended on pulling free of Black Claw, especially if he couldn't bring them the family image they wanted.

That didn't mean he was powerless and it didn't mean he didn't have some idea of how he could work that to his advantage. He may not have gotten what he wanted from Adalind or Nick but he'd gotten something else, he'd found a weak point and he would exploit that to get exactly what he wanted.

After all, stopping Black Claw was for the greater good.


End file.
